Overview
Any property that has Booking.com integration directly with Distribution Hub can take full payment on Non-Refundable rate* bookings (including upsells) at room level.
- Save staff time – no need to update sensitive data in multiple systems manually
- Improve property cash flow – no human error, no misunderstandings or missed payments, charge upfront
- Secure guests’ reservation – guest not only guarantees the booking but also secures their payment details and you reduce the likelihood of no show or last-minute guest cancellation
*All other policies will be ignored because:
- Some policies state that they can only be charged on Cancellation. Some can be charged on creation. However, there is nothing to differentiate these policies, meaning we charge when we should not. The Non-Refundable policy is the only one where we can guarantee that we should be charging when we receive the booking
- For properties who use virtual cards, the only policy where the virtual card is active on booking creation is Non-Refundable. ALL other policies, the virtual card is only active on the day of arrival
Please note that this is for the Booking.com direct connection to Distribution Hub only. Where Booking.com reservations are delivered via a 3rd party this feature is not supported, i.e. Best Western CRS
Practical Example
Non-refundable policy:
The guest will be charged a prepayment of the total cost of the stay when we receive the reservation from Booking.com.
How to configure
1. Set up Booking.com Cancellation Policy
Should a property wish to start receiving deposits for specific Rate Plans, they will need to log on to their Booking.com portal to set up their Pre-Payment Cancellation Policies.
Once logged on to the desired property, the user will need to navigate to ‘Property’ and then ‘Policies’.
At this stage, the existing policies can be reviewed, or a new policy can be created.
2. Rate Plan
Once the Cancellation Policy has been set up, this need to be applied to a Rate Plan. This can be completed under ‘Rates & Availability’ and ‘Rate Plans’ on the Booking.com portal.
The desired Rate Plan will also need to be mapped in Rate Plan Conversions for Booking.com in Distribution Hub. Booking.com Self Serve Mapping
3. Payment Taken
Distribution Hub will identify if a deposit is required to be taken, based on the Cancellation Policy received with the reservation from Booking.com.
When the reservation is received in Distribution Hub, if the policy on the reservation is identified as the Non-Refundable policy, payment will be taken for the total cost of the stay.
Should a deposit be required, Distribution Hub will make a call to the property’s payment provider and in return will send the tokenised card details along with the deposit value to Guestline Rezlynx PMS.
Once delivered into Guestline Rezlynx PMS, the deposit can be seen under Deposits on the reservation. A summary of the reservation can also be seen on the Distribution Hub ‘Notes’ within ‘Notes & Logs’.
Scenarios
1. Virtual Card Handling
For reservations where payment is made directly to Booking.com, the reservation is delivered with a virtual card, which has an activation date. Distribution Hub will handle virtual cards in the following way:
- If the activation date of the virtual card is after the current booking date, we will ignore the card, i.e. we will not try to take payment or authorisation. To charge these virtual cards, the hotel will need to log on to their Booking.com portal to retrieve the details of the card. This will need to be manually processed at the property.
- If the activation date of the virtual card is equal to or before the current booking date, Distribution Hub will charge/authorise the virtual card as appropriate when the reservation is created and deliver the token and payment to Guestline Rezlynx PMS.
For reservations made on a Non-Refundable rate, where payment is completed to Booking.com, the activation date of the virtual card delivered with the reservation is always the day the reservation is made (However, please be aware there is a ‘Grace Period’ setting on the Booking.com extranet which populates the activation date as the next day). If the card is active when we receive a non-refundable reservation, we will charge the virtual card the requested deposit payment amount and deliver this with the reservation to Rezlynx PMS.
Please note, if the reservation is for a multi-room reservation, we will apply the appropriate deposits to each multi-room reservation.
2. Guest Card Handling
When guests book in Booking.com with their own card, the deposit payment will be taken for Non-Refundable rates based on the total amount of each room stay in the reservation.
3. Upsells/Add-ons
On the Booking.com extranet, you can configure Upsells (also referred to as Add-On’s or Services). The Upsells can either be included in the rate or charged as an additional cost on top of the booked rate, depending on how you have configured them.
Upsells that have been configured to not be included in the rate on the Booking.com extranet will affect the total cost of the reservation. These types of upsells are included in the requested deposit amount or in the total section on each room stay when we receive a non-refundable rate reservation and are therefore included in the amount, we charge for both payments made by virtual or guest cards.
How to configure Booking.com Upsells
4. Managing Modifications
Should the prepaid booking be modified, resulting in an increase in price, you have two ways to manage this.
The first one is to log in to the Booking.com extranet to retrieve the card details and charge the card, remembering to alter the deposit amount in the reservation in Rezlynx.
The second would be to take the additional payment from the tokenised information in the Guarantee tab in Rezlynx.
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